Wednesday 9 January 2013

A New Beer Flavour Wheel

UPDATED NOVEMBER 2021: There's now a new version of the Beer Flavour Wheel! And alongside the Beer Flavour Wheels, there's now a Hop Flavour Wheel, a Malt Flavour Wheel, a Fermentation & Maturation Wheel, plus a wheel each for Hop and Malt Varieties! They're all available to purchase at www.beerdredge.com as a set of six as well as other formats.



---



I like the established beer flavour wheel, which was introduced in the 1970s by brewing chemist Dr Morten Meilgaard. It works well, it’s easy to read and it goes into a lot of technical detail. But looking at the wheel it includes compounds such as 2-Phenylethanol and Isoamyl acetate, which are pretty technical pieces of information that aren’t exactly common knowledge (2-Phenylethanol is a rose-like aroma and Isoamyl acetate is banana).

So while I like that wheel, it’s not the most consumer-friendly. Doing some research I found wheels for coffee, chocolate (both from here), wine (which is aroma-specific) and whisky, which are easy to use and interesting and break down the tasting experience into a simpler format, just giving recognisable flavours (mostly, anyway; I had no idea what cineolic or camphoric were in the coffee wheel until I googled them – like spicy, woody bay leaf or tea tree, I think).


When I was working on Craft Beer World, I thought I’d try and rework the beer wheel to see what I could do. Not as a replacement for the one we all know, but a wheel which is more approachable for general drinkers; one which looks at the specific ingredients and processes of beer, looks at esters and off-flavours, considers mouthfeel, aroma, flavour and the general experience of beer. Not necessarily one for brewers or the technical troubleshooters, I wanted a wheel aimed at looking for the right word to describe how beer tastes or for figuring out what a flavour is and where it might have come from.

It was just an itch-scratching experiment to begin and I started throwing down words and drawing big circles with lots of lines in and around them, but gradually a useable wheel took shape. And that wheel had a nice flow of flavours to it. So I sent it to my editor, who sent it to the (incredibly patient...) designer, who put something together.

The Beer Flavor Wheel (the book is written in American; or, more accurately, I wrote it in English and someone translated it) I come up with is in the book, which went to print this week and will be out in a few months. And here it is below, the first thing I’m allowed to share from Craft Beer World. I’m really pleased with how this wheel has turned out and I hope that it can be something which drinkers find useful. What do you think? 


20 comments:

  1. I shall buy it if there is a free Dredgie poster to put up in my office next to my Nuts Lucy Pinder poster.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's a great idea Mark and would be really useful when trying to put a finger on that elusive smell or "flavor". What are the chances of getting some printed up as promo handouts for the book, or an extra insert?

    Nice work sir

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great stuff. I love this sort of infographic.

    I'd like to have a portable version I could carry with me and constantly refer to. Perhaps a shiny, foldable A3 type affair. I might even be prepared to pay.

    Dan

    http://mediocrebeeradventures.blogspot.co.uk/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Pretty much what I've just said Dan.

      That said, I've just sent a copy of this to my iPhone and iPad as a reference point.

      Delete
    2. Thanks guys! We're working on some kind of printed idea for this, whether it's posters or something else. I'd definitely like to have it to use separately from the book.

      Delete
    3. Mr. Dredge, did you ever get posters/prints made? Would like to buy one.

      Delete
  4. Very nice work :)

    One small correction 2-Methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, band aid aroma) is a phenol not an ester

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cheers Oblivious - it's in with the esters so that it's considered with wit/weiss styles, primarily. Plus I'm only working with a limited amount of space so needed to simplify where possible!

      Delete
  5. Nothing to do with beer(since it's cognac), but this is an brilliant looking illustration:

    http://www.bnic.fr/cognac/_en/2_cognac/index.aspx?page=aromes

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That cognac illustration is very nice - I saw that one yesterday. I'd like to work on a couple of other wheels to go into more details.

      Delete
  6. Great work! wonderful stuff, entirely agree with the need for more detail.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Never quite understood the purpose of these things, they're pretty for sure but I would need some help as to how or why I would use it

    ReplyDelete
  8. I appreciate you've put a lot of time and effort into this Mark, and speaking as a scientist it looks the dog's whatsits. However, speaking as a beer lover, it's far too anal and geeky to be of any practical use - just imagine the bemused looks from fellow drinkers, when you get one of those out in a pub!

    Just enjoy the beer for what it is; don't try to analyse it all the time!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Great effort - much appreciated!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Great wheel. I was actually looking for one of these the other day. The ones I found were lacking. This will come very handy in beer reviews. Nice work!

    http://thatbeernerd.com

    ReplyDelete
  11. Very sorry I missed this a few weeks ago - I've just finished putting together a zoomable beer flavour wheel based on the Morten Meilgaard wheel on Table & Vine.

    http://northwestwarriors.org.uk/d3js/beer-wheel.html

    It's mostly derivative at the moment (javascript is plundered, beer wheel has been around 40 years) but I hope to expand on it and use it on our beer festival website so that visitors can tag beers we're serving interactively.

    ReplyDelete
  12. These are some great wheels. We recently wrote about this too on out blog at; http://www.theperfectcellar.com/blog/wine-tasting-the-aroma-wheel/ check it out and let me know what you think

    ReplyDelete
  13. Hi Mark,
    Interesting work. Sometimes we are people working in silos -time for some collaboration?
    Cheers,
    Jens Eiken
    See the Danish Beer Language: http://www.olakademiet.dk/default.asp?pid=45 - download the little booklet

    ReplyDelete
  14. This is the sort of thing I always want when I go to a beer festival before I become too befuddled with flavours to think straight! Excellent stuff!

    ReplyDelete